“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” (John 3:14-15)
This Sunday we continue our series on Israel travelling in the wilderness.
From bad to worse, from great to greater
Our Bible reading this morning, from chapter 21 of the Old Testament book of Numbers, naturally falls into three sections, each section being two verses long. So, of course, it makes sense for this sermon to be divided into four parts!?! – or in any event I will do my best to say, when it comes to it, why it should have four parts! And those four parts can be summed up in the phrases ‘from bad to worse’ and ‘from great to greater’. We’ll start out with the bad, and see how far we get.
If you’ve been here of a Sunday morning at any time in the recent past, when there have been a series of sermons on the book of Numbers, you’ll be familiar with the situation the Israelites found themselves in, being led by Moses through the wilderness . After the first sermon a month ago, which was called ‘Setting out with God’, the last three sermon titles have been ‘grumbling about provision’, ‘grumbling about plans’, and ‘grumbling about leadership’. The working title I was originally given for today is ‘grumbling about everything’, and that is essentially what we read about in Numbers chapter 21, verses 4 and 5:
They travelled along the route to the Red Sea, but the people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!’
So that ‘grumbling about everything’ title is perfectly good as a description of what took place there, as long as we recognise two things: first, that to say that the Israelites were ‘grumbling’ is a polite way of expressing the frantic desperation they must have felt, and second, that if we were in their shoes, we would most likely have said and done exactly what they said and did.
Last year, Carolina Wilga, a German backpacker on a solo trip around Australia became lost in the outback. The four wheel drive she had been travelling cross country in developed a fault, which led to her losing control of the vehicle and ending up stuck in a bog, without a map, 100 miles away from the nearest township or mobile phone signal. The news reports said that Carolina stayed with her car for a day “before panicking and striking out to find help”.1 She “used the sun’s position to head west”, and “had minimal food and water with her”, but “drank water from rain and puddles to survive”. “At one point, she sought shelter in a cave.” “In her mind, she had convinced herself that she was not going to be located”, and “got to a point where she thought no one was coming”.
Indeed, she had not given herself the best chance of rescue. “Staying with your vehicle is the golden rule in the outback”, according to a survival expert quoted in the press. “Not only does it help searchers, it provides shelter and the mirrors can be used the attract attention”. Safety advice for those heading to the outback includes packing beacons and tinsel lines, which can be used to form a giant X on the ground to be seen from the air. Alternatively, you could set your vehicle on fire in the hope of being found!
In the event, Carolina Wilga was spotted at the side of the road, 12 days after going missing, by a passing motorist. She was barefoot, dehydrated, starving, ravaged by mosquitoes, had cuts and bruises, and was confused and disoriented. She was 15 miles away from her vehicle when she was found, on a road used only two or three times a week by cars.
Carolina expressed gratitude to everyone involved in the search that was mobilised to find her, and to save her life. She later resumed her journey around Australia. But if on the days prior to her rescue, she had expressed worry about food and water, or despair about her life, we would recognise this to have been the result of fear and desperation, in a situation that would be enough to drive anyone to their wits’ end. We might choose not to call it ‘grumbling’ exactly. We might choose not to be too hard on her, because we know that in her situation, we too would have struggled with despair.
This, I think, describes very well the situation faced by the Israelites in Numbers chapter 21. They were miraculously provided with food and drink in the wilderness, it is true, but they had no roof over their head, and no assurances about how long their ordeal would last. We can say that they should have trusted God and Moses, instead of complaining, but we have to admit that they were in a terrifying position, and that most likely we would have behaved no differently in similar circumstances.
In fact, I think we have to admit that we do not always respond well to the circumstances we do actually face. Instead we may nurture an unconscious expectation that everything ought to go well for us and for those we love. We didn’t get this expectation from the Bible, or from Christianity, by the way. Our Lord has told us that in this world, we will have trouble (John 16:33) but it is an expectation that runs deep. It blights our faith, it misplaces our hope, and it kills our love.
The moment the smallest thing goes wrong, or the moment the largest thing goes wrong, we look for someone to blame, someone to fix everything, or at least someone to listen to us as we complain about it. When we do this, we are imitating the Israelites of Number chapter 21, and like them we face a bad situation.
And then things go from bad to worse:
The LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said ‘We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people.
Have you ever noticed that sometimes things seem to have to get worse before they get better? This is as true in the Bible, as it is in human experience, and there is mystery surrounding the activity of God involved in this, both in experience and in the Bible.
One of my favourite books of the Old Testament is the book of Jonah. If you’re familiar with the story, you will know that it starts by the prophet throwing himself off a boat in the midst of a raging storm. He is in clear danger of drowning, and just as you think things couldn’t get any worse, in the final verse of the first chapter, God sent a great fish to swallow Jonah, and he was inside the fish three days and three nights. Things became worse before they became better as a result of what God sent.
And you may also remember that the book ends with Jonah sheltering from the blazing sun under a vine, before God sent a worm, in verse 7 of the final chapter, which chewed the vine so that it withered, and exposed the prophet to the elements. Once again things got worse before they got better because of what God sent. Likewise in Numbers 21 verse 6, the LORD sent venomous snakes among the people, and things went from bad to worse.
If there’s one thing worse than being lost in the outback, it’s being bitten by a snake when you’re lost in the outback. Having grown up in Australia, I can tell you that if you have to be bitten by a snake, it’s best to get bitten in the suburbs of a major city, with easy transport links to the nearest hospital. There are of course many different kinds of deadly snakes in Australia, and they each have their own variety of deadly venom, but anti-venom has been developed for all of these varieties, and all the hospitals have supplies.
The main thing they need to know in order to treat you correctly is which kind of snake you have been bitten by. When I was young, I was told that they best way to do this would be to kill the snake that has bitten you, and take it with you to the hospital, so they know which anti-venom to give you. Today, I suppose they would say that all you need to do is to take a photo of the snake on your mobile phone.
But whatever you do, don’t get bitten in the outback, hundreds of miles from any hospital. If you do, your goose could be cooked, as the Israelites discovered.
Did anything good come of the arrival of these snakes, which in the mystery of God’s providence were said to have been sent by the LORD, and which on the face of it made a bad situation far worse?
On the evidence of the verses we are reading, something good did come, which was the realisation on the part of the Israelites that what they had said was wrong, and their plea for Moses to pray for their deliverance. This was an insight they did not have previously, and it was as hard-won as the insights gained by Jonah in the fish, and when exposed to the elements. Out of something evil, in the mercy of God, something new, and true, and good, did emerge in the end. I find that encouraging, and I hope that you do too. It helps me to understand and live by the words of the modern hymn which we / sung earlier / will sing later on:
When trials come, no longer fear
For in the pain our God draws near
To fire a faith worth more than gold
And there his faithfulness is told.2
So now we can move on ‘from bad to worse’, and begin to encounter ‘from great to greater’. The great thing is, of course, the fact that the Israelites were delivered from the threat posed by the snakes. They were not delivered in the way they had hoped or imagined – they had asked that the LORD would take the snakes away from them, and that is not what happened – but they were delivered nevertheless. Likewise we must not be surprised if we are not delivered from the trials we undergo in the way we hope or expect. However much we may wish to hear the Lord say that ‘in this world, you will not have trouble’, in the end it is far, far better for us to know his actual promise, that in this world we will have trouble, but take heart, he has overcome the world.
And what a strange and mysterious way the LORD had to heal his people:
[He] said to Moses, ‘Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live’. So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived.
I hope you don’t mind me saying that this is pretty weird, and has long been recognised as being weird. 1600 years ago, the Church Father St Augustine set out the paradox in a sermon, saying that “the serpent is gazed upon, so that the serpent may lose its power … death is gazed upon, so that death may lose its power”.3 But then, it is also a paradox to be told that if you’re bitten by a snake, you should bring the snake with you to hospital to be healed.
So, too, there is a paradox embedded in the production of anti-venom itself. Small, non-harmful doses of venom are injected into domestic animals to trigger the creation of antibodies, which are then harvested and purified from the blood plasma of these animals, and used to neutralise toxins in human bite victims. Such is the miracle of modern medicine.
It must have seemed counter-intuitive to the Israelites to escape death by gazing upon death. And I won’t pretend to explain how this actually worked. To do so, even if such a thing were possible, would be to demythologise it, to strip it of its miraculous nature, and to transform it from a saving act of God into a bright idea of Moses. All I can really say is that we have here a record of a great deliverance from a deadly danger.
The motorist who rescued Carolina Wilga in the outback said to the press that “miracle is a word that gets bandied about a lot, but [in the absence of any outside help she survived 12 days and] went cross country to come to my road”. The word ‘miracle’ is indeed over-used, but any way you look at the story of the bronze snake lifted up on a pole, it is one of remarkable survival in the wilderness. It is a story not of human ingenuity – on the level of human rationality, it does not make any sense at all. Rather, it is a story of the great work of God to save his people, which is the same story we have been hearing week by week in this series of sermons on the book of Numbers.
And now at last we can move through bad to worse, and from great to greater. The New Testament tells us in not so many words that one greater than Moses is here (Hebrews 3:3-4). Specifically in relation to the bronze snake, this is what we are told by in the Gospel of John, chapter 3, verses 14 and 15:
Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
This is why it makes sense for this sermon to have a fourth part. We need to explore the backward look at the book of Numbers that is taken by the Gospel writer. As great as it is to be delivered from trouble, to be rescued from starvation or snake-bite in the wilderness, it is far greater to be delivered from one’s own sin.
That is why Jesus, upon once encountering a paralysed man, said ‘Your sins are forgiven’ long before he ever said to him ‘Rise up, take your mat, and walk’. Which is greater to speak: words of physical healing or words of spiritual restoration? Well, at one level it’s easy to string any sentence together whatsoever, but the question really concerns the power required to bring about the state of affairs that the words proclaim. On that level, it’s far greater to say ‘Your sins are forgiven’, and Jesus is in a position not only to speak the forgiveness of sin but actually to bring it about by virtue of being, in the phrase used by John, ‘lifted up’.
Bible scholars tell us that “the first step in [his] ascent is when Jesus is lifted up on the cross; the second step is when he is raised up from death; the final step is when he is lifted up to heaven”.4 “His lifting up will result not only in glory for himself but also in healing for [hu]mankind”.5
This is weird, because crucifixion was the most violent and degrading form of execution known to the ancient world, and most of those passing by a scene of crucifixion would naturally want to avert their gaze away from the horror of the scene. And it is a paradox, as St Augustine says: “Death is gazed upon so that death may lose its power. … In the death of Christ, death died, because life [slaughtered] death, the fullness of life swallowed death, death was devoured in the body of Christ”.6 This truth is not to be explained away, demythologised, or transformed from a work of God into a cunning human plan. As far as human ingenuity goes, it doesn’t make any sense. No-one would have thought that the apparent weakness, shame and futility of Christ on the cross could have effected any sort of deliverance.
But, says Augustine, “just as those who gazed on the serpent did not die because of the serpent’s bite, so those who gaze in faith on the death of Christ are healed of the bite of sins”. The Israelites “were preserved from death for a life in time, but Christ says that [those who believe in him] may have eternal life”.7
And this, the greatest deliverance of all, is what ultimately lies behind the story of God’s preservation of his people, as told throughout the Old Testament book of Numbers. In this world we will have trouble, and things may sometimes appear to go from bad to worse. But we may take heart. Jesus Christ has overcome the world, and our deliverance will be from great to greater.
1 This and all following quotations concerning this story are taken from The Guardian’s 12 July 2025 coverage under the headline ‘Sheer luck: how German backpacker Carolina Wilga was found after 11 nights lost in dense Australian outback’.
2 Lyrics © Keith and Kristyn Getty.
3 St Augustine, Homilies on the Gospel of John 1-40, translated by Edmund Hill (New City Press, New York, 2009), p. 238.
4 Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according to John I-XII (Doubleday, New York, 1966), p. 146.
5 C.K. Barrett, The Gospel according to St John (SPCK, London, 1967), p. 179.
6 St Augustine, Homilies on the Gospel of John 1-40, translated by Edmund Hill (New City Press, New York, 2009), p. 238.
7 Ibid.
St. George's Church Ramsgate 